This invention relates to a needle supply device for accommodating such as curved needles for surgical operations and the like, and for supplying the needles to a predetermined position of an apparatus for manufacturing sutures attached with the needles.
Recently, in the field of medical industry, there have been marketed sterilized needle-attached sutures (sutures attached with needles) for surgical operations in which the point of a suture is fixedly attached to a needle. There have also been known apparatuses for manufacturing such needle-attached sutures comprising a needle retaining unit for retaining a needle in a certain posture (or direction), a suture inserting unit for inserting a suture into an insertion hole of the end of the needle in the certain fixed posture, and a swaging die for fixedly swaging the end of the needle with the suture inserted in the insertion hole to produce a needle-attached suture.
The prior art mentioned above has been involved with the following problems to overcome.
Generally, such a needle for surgical operations and the like is curved into a substantially arc shape, and thus it has a certain directionality. Accordingly, in producing needle-attached sutures by the above manufacturing apparatus, the needles are required to be supplied to the needle retaining unit one by one in a state that they are set accurately in the same direction. However, a device for automatically supplying needles in the same posture has not ever been developed, and it has been inevitable that the needle supply relies on manual operations.
In view of the above, an object of this invention is to provide a needle supply device for use in a needle-attached suture manufacturing apparatus and the like capable of supplying curved needles, which are at randomly set with its direction being irregular, to a predetermined position of the apparatus one by one in a state that all the needles are oriented in the same direction accurately.